Music – tectonikTombwa

INNOVATE|| TRANSFORM|| INSPIRE||

Why Music?

Many of Gama’s compositions are part of larger conceptual projects that explore social, historical, and environmental themes. He uses his music to tell stories of significant importance in Southern Africa’s contemporary history, making his work not just musically compelling but engaging on many levels.

”I’m at the World New Music Days in South Africa and Victor gave a stand out performance earlier this afternoon at The Centre for the Less Good Idea (a space set up by William Kentridge) – a kind of media opera without singers, but powerfully charged (yet gently so) for our current times.”

Ed McKeon, Third Ear UK

tectonik.TOMBWA – pieces for acrux and toha

solo concert, Buskirk-Chumley Theater, Bloomington, Indiana

The Acrux is celebrating twenty-five years in existence. It’s part of a broader theory that argues for the continuity of the same processes that gave us traditional musical instruments, now developed in the 21st century within the context of current digital technologies.

In tectonic.Tombwa, Victor Gama develops a sound palette using his unique set of musical instruments as exclusive sound libraries, squaring the circle between Southern African polyrhythmic patterns and ostinato, particularly from Angola. Exploring the potential of electroacoustic music, blending acoustic sounds with electronic processing and manipulation, his experimentation with sound textures and timbres adds depth and complexity to his compositions.

tectonik.TOMBWA – Geografias em Colisão

A documentary on Augusto Zita's work in the Namibe desert, Angola

Augusto Zita was one of the first African anthropologists to reverse the direction of the anthropological inquiry in the attempt to understand the colonial societies that had established themselves in his country, by researching their cultural symbols and values imprinted on the infrastructure built throughout centuries of presence there and the organization, administration and use of the territory.